


Destination Unknown

by deathwailart



Series: Red Hoods [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sexual Content, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The wolf in this is more like a werewolf and it borrows from the selkie myths; the wolves become humans by removing their skins but the skins are either hidden or carried with them. Um, any UK slang/Scottishisms that you don’t get, just ask.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Destination Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> The wolf in this is more like a werewolf and it borrows from the selkie myths; the wolves become humans by removing their skins but the skins are either hidden or carried with them. Um, any UK slang/Scottishisms that you don’t get, just ask.

It isn’t quite dark when Robin leaves, old battered black boots, jeans stuffed into them and laced up tight, torch in one hand, pistol in the other. There’s a knife tucked into the left one; it rubs against her ankle with every step but it’s good, it reminds her that it’s there, that she has it with her. There’s another, right side, wedged into her belt but more often than not she uses it if the trails she’s taking are starting to get overgrown with bracken and brambles. Right now the woods are still mostly dead from a long winter and even though it’s late April the trees are mostly bare and the landscape is overwhelmingly brown. She prefers when it’s dark because the lack of colour is almost depressing; it makes her stand out far more in her red hooded top. Honestly, sometimes she could go without wearing the hoodie because it doesn’t provide enough protection from the cold, harsh winds or rain and in the warmer months it gets too hot but it’s tradition, something that’s been drilled into her head since she was inducted into the Red Hoods as a young woman.

As a Red Hood, it’s her duty to hunt his kind. They’re dangerous. They have been around since mothers first noticed their children being picked off at night or disappearing into the forests with smiles on their faces only to turn up as a mangled mess of bones and tendons. They knew that the only way to make the world safe was to try and drive the wolves out but that was never mentioned in the stories handed down. No, those stories did not tell of how the legends had started, with the girls being sent on a rite of passage through the woods with chains and knives made of silver and later pistols and shotguns loaded with silver bullets. No, the stories told of a naïve girl and a man coming to the rescue. In truth, the girl – older, on the cusp of womanhood – killed the wolf herself and took his skin to her grandmother where there was a celebration to mark her as worthy of it.

Robin has been brought up with the stories, the real ones, for year after year. She actually likes the fairy tale too but she knows she’ll get a cuff round the head and a lecture from the women in her family if she ever admits to it.

She sighs and heads deeper into the woods, taking trails she knows well and pausing to look for tracks but the ground is dry beneath her feet and there are no real tracks to follow but there are signs that someone has been through here recently judging from the viciously hacked gorse that lines the sides of the path. Farmland borders the other side and there are plenty of hiding places both here in the woods at this side of the fence and the woods at the other side of the field, the entire area being big enough for several wolves to dwell comfortably either as a pack of sorts or as solitary loners. There’s one particular wolf she’s hunting tonight though and she knows he should be around here somewhere, stuck between one world and the other, unable to make his choice about where he should be. She keeps walking, jogging up the hill to look out and over the land and the water below. There’s definitely an appeal to this place with the view and how hushed it seems and in the spring and summer, when everything is lush and green and vibrant, it’s sheltered and peaceful.

If you don’t know about the hidden dangers lurking in the shadows who would just as soon rip your throat out as look at you if they catch you alone and off guard.

She sets off again, listening out for any sounds that might give him away. There’s an owl hooting in a tall Douglas Fir above her and its mate calls back to it from further ahead, rustling of some small things – voles or mice perhaps – in the tussocks and no doubt an owl is ready to swoop down and make a meal out of them. Then, loud and sudden enough to make her jump and have her heart racing behind her there’s a strange grunting sound and very definite thundering noises and her gun is in her hand, the safety off and pointing in the direction of the noise. Said noise turns out to be a false alarm in the form of several deer, probably last year’s young, leaping up and over the fence into the field with ease. They’ve given her a clue though; something disturbed them enough to get them up and running and if she follows where they came from, she’s sure she’ll find something.

He sits on the crumbling remains of a low rock wall. His fingers are stained and so are his lips and she takes the safety off and steps forward, purposeful stride and his eyes go wide because right now she’s a lot stronger than him. The full moon is gone and it leaves any wolf drained when they return to their human form afterwards by shedding their skin. Most though choose to remain as wolves for a few days, seeking some dark secluded place to sleep and recover. In packs, there’s safety and security and they can afford the luxury of sleeping it off while trading turns at watch. For a lone wolf, changing back is the safest option. A single Red Hood can bring down a wolf before the wolf even knows they’re there and they do most of their hunting now, pressing their advantage. She keeps close to the trees and moves slowly and narrowly avoids stepping on a twig that would no doubt crack under her weight with more noise than a gunshot. So far, he hasn’t seen her and she’s lining up a shot when he looks up and his eyes go wide that she recognises him.

“Shit,” she says, gun still in hand. “Ambrose?”  
  
“Robin?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s me.” She pushes her hood a little further back so her face isn’t completely shrouded and makes her way down to where he is. “What the hell is on your face?”  
  
“Berries. Why?”  
  
“It looks like blood in the dark,” she replies and he gives her a thin smile and wipes his hands on his jeans. The action makes him wince and before he can cover for it, she’s lifting aside the wolf skin he has draped around him almost like a cape, swearing at what she sees. “What happened?”  
  
“Had a run in with them the other night. The old man wasn’t too happy to see me.”  
  
“Have you cleaned this?”  
  
“I’ve only just shifted back a couple of hours ago but I can clean it when I get back to my flat.”  
  
“Your flat,” Robin says with her nose wrinkled in distaste, “is a breeding ground for superbugs. Don’t forget I’ve seen it.”  
  
“Then why do you come back?”  
  
“Because I’m a poor student who lives with her mum and dad and her aunt and doesn’t want to risk her folks catching her in flagrante delicto.”  
  
“And because she doesn’t want her parents to find out that she’s doing it with a wolf.”  
  
“It’s not that.” He gives her a deadpan look and she sighs and shoves him. “Okay, so part of it is that but you’re not just a wolf anymore than I’m just a Red Hood.”  
  
“You can take your hood off though and step away any time. Me? I’m stuck.”

When he’s like this, he seems so young and so small, nothing like the person she knows outside of this who is witty and funny and who has her in stitches on a daily basis, annoying her when she’s trying to get on with her work and sneaking her things. When she’s at university and he’s working as a librarian at that same university, they’re friends and all of this, her secret double life where she goes out and shoots people who are really wolves and where he turns into something that shouldn’t even exist in the real world. Sometimes it’s hard for her to juggle the lives she’s meant to lead and for him, it must be so much worse. At least she has a family. Apart from her and a few friends from work, he has no one.

“You don’t have to be stuck,” she finally says and she can’t quite make herself look at him.  
  
“I know. I can choose one or the other can’t I? God, I know my family don’t want me anymore but it’s like cutting off a piece of me. I can’t decide. What if one day I _want_ to do it all properly? If I want to stay as a wolf forever?”  
  
“I don’t know. I can’t make that choice. All I know is that if you did that, I’d have to kill you one day because those are the rules.”  
  
“You could kill me now.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because if you’re like this...if you’re a person, I can’t do it. I can’t rationalise killing the person I see every day, the person who sits and talks to me while I’m studying and who always gets me the copy of the book I need even when it’s meant to be impossible. Because I know you and I know it’s a double standard because I’ve killed plenty of others but I _know_ you. And I can’t.”  
  
He goes quiet for a while, licking the last of the berry juice from his fingers – and it is berry juice, she can smell it on his breath, tart and fresh – while he thinks over that.   
  
“Remember when you found out?”  
  
“Shit, I think I almost fainted.”  
  
“You did. Banged your head on the kitchen counter.”  
  
“Christ,” and she laughs because she remembers her exact words of ‘oh holy fucking Jesus, you’re a fucking wolf’ and how before he’d managed to get a word out, her vision had blacked out. “You looked like a rabbit in the headlights.”  
  
“Which is pretty ironic, all things considered.” He keeps his straight face for all of five seconds before he’s cracking up too and she leans one hand on his shoulder as she attempts to get her breath back.

“You should have phoned me,” she says eventually and her voice has a sharp edge to it. “I’d have brought a first aid kit with me.”  
  
“You don’t get a reception out here silly.”  
  
“You do in some bits.”  
  
“I don’t like bringing my phone into the woods, might lose it. Clothes are one thing to tuck away but not your mobile. It’s not too bad, stayed in my skin till the worst of it was gone and it’s not open anymore. If you’re worried, I’ll see a doctor, say I fell when I was out walking.”  
  
“You damn well will see a doctor. You can get all sorts here; do you want to end up with septicaemia?”  
  
“No mother.” She elbows him in the ribs when he says that and he takes the opportunity to sneak his arm around her. “S’nice, being out here sometimes.”  
  
“Except for the whole part where, technically, I’m meant to be disposing of you.”  
  
“Well, there’s that.”

A lone wolf howls in the distance and Robin glares in that direction.

“There’s that too. Ambrose, what if they really get fed up of the choices you’ve made and come after you?”  
  
“They won’t.”  
  
“Ambrose, they attacked you the other night and they’ve done it before.”  
  
“I got too close...it was my own fault. When it’s the full moon and I’ve got no choice, all the instincts take over and it makes me want to be part of a pack, even if I ran away from my blood one the first chance I got.”  
  
“You miss it, don’t you?” With cautious hands she strokes over the wolf skin from the tip of the nose that sits over Ambrose’s head like some strange hooded costume and down, almost pausing to scratch behind the ears the way she would with a dog before she continues down to the small of his back. He shudders when she does that and she’s not sure if it’s from the contact or if the wolf skin actually has any feelings in it. She’s asked her mother and aunts and other Red Hoods but generally none of them know or they just don’t care. And usually the skin they’re burning still has a wolf attached to it, albeit a dead one.  
  
“Of course I miss it. Everyone wants a family don’t they?” There’s uncertainty though, one that’s always been there as long as she’s known Ambrose and she can’t imagine running away as young as he did, leaving everything behind him and heading for a strange new city in a strange new country.

Robin doesn’t know what to say to that because everything in her life is, to an extent, taken for granted. She can’t imagine not having her parents there for her no matter what although, if they find out about Ambrose, she might very well have to. The creed that’s she’s followed since being inducted into the Red Hoods clearly states that she has to kill a wolf and that consorting with one is strictly verboten. If her parents, more specifically her mother, find out then she’s liable to be disciplined, kicked out of the house and shunned and end up with Ambrose dead. It means that no one else can find out either, hence why Ambrose has never met any of her family. There’s too much risk attached.

“Hey, you in there?” Ambrose is smiling and the wolf skin stretched around his face smiles with him.  
  
“Sorry, thinking.”  
  
“About what? The creed?”  
  
“Doing this.”

She catches the front of the wolf skin and pulls him close and right now he doesn’t smell at all like a wolf, he smells like the woods, like the berries he’s been eating, like Ambrose and she leans forward to kiss him, almost toppling them back and off the wall. Her gun is sitting next to her and she grabs for it because it’s a reflex to have it with her at all times and when they manage to get to their feet, his hands on her hips beneath her clothes it ends up wedged awkwardly between them until she moves her wrist as she stretches up to deepen the kiss. She holds it against him and he hisses, arches, his neck one long elegant line in the weak, watery moonlight and the wolf skin tips back and he’s so fragile like this. He’s trusting her. He’s trusting her not to sink one of the silver blades in her possession into his neck; she knows how to go for the jugular. She could just as easily open up the artery in his thigh, the thigh pressed between hers as he makes a low noise in his throat. The barrel of the gun rests on his hip and when she eases it away there’s a circular burn.

She drops it to the ground because she has far better things to do with her hands.

“I’m not an expert,” Ambrose says, “but isn’t right now one of those times where you should be putting that gun to good use?”  
  
“I think this is one of those times where you should be putting your mouth to good use.”  
  
“Yes ma’am.” The smile he gives her is a cheeky one, one reserved for when he knows she’s taking out books that have dirty bits in them along with the books she needs for her coursework. “But what about the creed?”  
  
“Oh fuck the creed.”

His smile grows and he slides his hands up and under her hoodie and t-shirt, the clothes travelling with the movement and she gasps when the cold air hits her skin. But then he’s there, warm and solid in body even if he trembles when she touches him. He hesitates so she takes the lead and she can feel him relax once she does and when they’re both naked, lying back in the ferns and the bracken, him arching up to meet her as they cry out together, she wishes that everything else was just as easy as taking them taking off their clothes.

\---

Life goes back to normal. She goes to university, falls asleep in some of her classes and goes back to Ambrose’s flat on the nights she won’t be missed at home. Her parents, well, her dad at least, keeps ribbing her about having a fancy man and bringing him home for dinner and an inspection and each time he does, it gets that little bit harder to laugh it off. The full moon rolls round three more times and it’s the third time that she realises that something has to happen, that Ambrose needs to make a decision because she ends up having to stitch him up. After the time she caught him with a healing gash on his back, she’d taken a backpack with her, stocked with food and drink and medical supplies, just in case.

It probably saves his life because the wounds are nasty. They’re not bites and claw marks meant to deter someone and chase them off. They are serious, “if you don’t fuck off now we will rip you to shreds” bites.

“What am I going to do?” He asks and she bites her lip and makes sure the stitches are tight.  
  
“You need to choose. You need to decide what path you’re on.”  
  
“You make it sound so easy.”  
  
“I know it’s not but they’re out for your blood and so are the Red Hoods. If anyone else had found you, you’d be dead by now.”  
  
“So I have to pick a side.”  
  
“Yes. That’s what it comes down to in the end.”  
  
“What do you think I should do?”  
  
“Don’t do that. This isn’t my life, it’s yours. It isn’t for me to pick.”

But she knows what she wants him to do. She knows and it’s trouble. Because even if he chooses the other path, she still won’t be able to bring herself to do it.

“Sometimes,” he says much later when they’re sitting on the rock wall, “I wish you would kill me.”

\---

Her mother and her get along well and usually, she’s the one Robin turns to when she needs advice. And this type of advice is the type only her mother could give her when it’s about Red Hood business; yes, she loves the other women in her family who are a part of it but she can’t trust them, not with this. And it’s worth sounding her mother out too, to see where she really stands if it’s just the two of them so before dinner when she’s home from university for the day, she sits her down and explains the situation as best she can without giving too much away.

“Kill him,” is the advice she’s given when she presents her dilemma to her mother.  
  
“It’s not that simple,” Robin retorts, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve.  
  
“Yes it is Robin. He’s one of them. A wolf. He’d kill people.”  
  
“He didn’t ask to be born one. He’s living amongst all of us most of the time; it’s only at the full moon when he has no choice that he goes into the woods alone.”  
  
“But he was born one. It means that he will pass on that gene. It means that there will be more of his kind in the future and that puts us at a risk. All of us. Especially those who don’t know and don’t stand a hope in hell of knowing how to deal with them.”  
  
“Don’t you think it’s about time that we stopped clinging to the past?” Robin begins as she gets up from the table because if this turns into a real fight, she wants to be on her feet. “I mean, they’re people when they’re away from their skins mum. They have jobs, they have lives.”  
  
“But every time the full moon turns around they become dangerous and savage. Hell, you’ve seen what happens when they lose their tempers.”  
  
“What makes us any better than them? We go out and we shoot them.”  
  
“Except you don’t. Not with this one.”  
  
“We’re only meant to shoot them in wolf form and I haven’t seen him when he’s a wolf,” Robin snaps and hopes that her mother doesn’t hear the lie in her voice.  
  
“But you’ve spoken to him. The others have seen you. They’ve heard it from the wolves when they’re taunting them. They call you a soft touch.”  
  
“I don’t give two shits what the others think. You’re all a bunch of superstitious old biddies.”  
  
“Well we know who he is now and if you’re not willing to kill him, someone else will.”

Robin’s blood runs cold and she glares at her mother who is now talking casually as though they’re discussing the weather.

“Fuck. You.” The words give her a heady rush and her heart is somewhere in her throat, thumping madly. It takes a while for her mother to say anything and Robin heads for the door before the situation can get any worse.

“When you shoot him, you’ll see him as a wolf. Don’t forget they revert back to their true forms. He isn’t a human, don’t kid yourself.”

Slamming the door shut behind her doesn’t help and doesn’t even make her feel better in the slightest. She’ll have to go home eventually and she isn’t relishing that but for now she’s going to run and she’s not going to think about red hoods and silver weapons or wolves with amber eyes or lonely boys littered with scars sitting on low rock walls and asking her to kill them just so there’s an end to all of this.

She runs until the wind stings her eyes and her legs are cramping viciously and it hurts to breathe. For the first time in a long time, she cries.

\---

It’s night and she isn’t trusted to go out on her own so one of her cousins is with her, chatting away school and how swimming is going. Robin is half paying attention; this cousin is younger because, when asked, she’s much more likely to report back honestly about what Robin does and because there she doesn’t have her own route to search.

“Coach thinks I’ve definitely got a good chance of getting the qualifying time for the hundred back and the hundred fly if I keep improving the way I have been.”  
  
“That’s nice,” Robin mutters and ducks under a low branch. She’s been replaying the fight from three days ago in her head and it still isn’t getting any better and the silences at the dinner table and her dad’s awkward attempts to play mediator haven’t made it any better. And she’s lost track of Ambrose and the last time she saw him, he didn’t look well at all.  
  
“You know, you should be paying more attention to what you’re doing.”  
  
“I’ve been doing this a hell of a lot longer than you. And you should know enough by now to keep your bloody mouth shut while we’re hunting. They have far better hearing than us and you’ve been blethering non-stop the entire time, in a place where noise carries,” Robin retorts and if a certain cheeky little madam gives her more backchat, she’s going to find herself with a sore mouth.  
  
“You’re such a bitch,” comes a sullen reply and Robin inhales sharply through her nose, holds it and forcibly lets it out again.

Robin doesn’t dignify that with a response and instead points out the tracks. They’re maybe a day or two old at the most and it’s hard to read an individual by them but seeing as there aren’t native wolves around here anymore, it’s definitely the pack. She keeps her sigh of relief to herself; if it’s a pack, Ambrose knows well enough to stay out of the way. It isn’t the full moon either so really, Ambrose shouldn’t be around but he’s been in the woods a lot at night, slinking around in the shadows in his wolf form. He’s trying to make a decision and she’s trying not to interfere but it’s hard and she wants to tell him what she wants, wants to be selfish and say that he should hand over the skin so she can set light to it and he can live a normal life and she can let him meet her family and not have to worry about him and someone putting a bullet in him or something ripping his throat out. It’s been keeping her awake, even when she’s with him and there’s this strange desperation coiling in her stomach every time they say goodbye and they kiss, just in case it’s the last time she sees him.

“Shit!” Her cousin breathes suddenly, going rigid and it makes Robin jump and look around sharply, listening out for any wild creatures but all she sees is someone coming down the path.  
  
“God, don’t make me jump like that.”  
  
“Sorry, but how do we explain having the knives on us?”  
  
“Pull your hoodie down, no one will see it then.”  
  
“Oh right. Hey, is that guy waving?”  
  
Sure enough he is and Robin raises a hesitant hand in greeting until she recognises who it is. “Fucking idiot.”  
  
“Who is?”  
  
“None of your business. Stay put and look out for anything.”  
  
“But!”  
  
“Do as you’re told. I’m in charge here.”

She jogs away and sure enough, it’s Ambrose, smiling as though there’s nothing wrong with him taking a stroll through the woods at night when she’s out on patrol.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She demands, glaring and folding her arms across her chest. “Didn’t you hear a word I said to you the other day? They know who you are!”  
  
“I know! But I needed to talk to you and I can’t exactly ring you, can I?”  
  
“Fine, but you need to be quick, it’s dangerous.”  
  
“I’ve made up my mind.”  
  
She freezes, shock replacing her anger for the moment. “What?”  
  
“I’ve made up my mind. I’ve been thinking about it since...you know, since that last time you had to stitch me up.”

Her throat is dry and tight and her palms are sweating and she feels as though she’s going to faint, the same way she did when she first found out his secret.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I chose?” Ambrose sounds amused and she wants to punch and would if she was on her own. She swallows hard and nods and Ambrose waits for her to gather her strength.  
  
“What did you decide?”  
  
“To be human.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yes. I want to be able to live like a normal person doing normal person things without all the stress and the worry. I want that. I want what everyone else takes for granted without some spectre hanging over my shoulder in one form or another.”

“Robin! Robin hurry up!”

She makes a face when her cousin yells for her and sticks up her middle finger, pointing it in her direction.

“I have it with me now.”  
  
“You have your skin with you?”  
  
“Yeah, so we can burn it tonight.”  
  
“Not so loud! My little cousin is right over there!”  
  
“Oh...does she know?”  
  
“She’s wearing a red hoodie and she’s with me when I’m wearing mine. And my mum said that they know who you are.”  
  
“Shite.”  
  
“Shite indeed. Okay, here’s what we’ll do; you come with me and I’ll go to the edge of the woods with her and tell her to go home and that I’m taking you back to your car. Then we’ll come back and we’ll do this.”  
  
“Okay, sounds like a plan.”

She turns to lead them back to the track but she can’t stop herself from turning around suddenly to press a kiss to his lips, beaming. They hold hands until they’re visible to her cousin and walk back with her, lying through their teeth. As soon as she’s sure her cousin is gone though, they’re running deep into the woods, scarcely able to contain their laughter all the way to the spot that’s somehow become their unofficial meeting place.

“Well,” he claps his hands together and looks at her and she waits expectantly until he gives her a lop-sided grin, “I have no idea how to go about this.”  
  
“Idiot,” she teases, kissing him on the way past to start hunting around for decent sticks. “I’ve got some matches in my pocket to get it going a bit faster. Start looking for smaller sticks and dry grass.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
“I still can’t believe you’re really doing this.”  
  
“I can.”

She looks up from where he’s stopping to haul up a clump of dry weeds and his smile is so bright and she can tell that he really has thought about this and that finally, he’s doing what _he_ wants. And that’s the most important thing, no, the only thing that matters.

\---

“Ready?” She asks and hands over the box to him and he nods, mouth set in a grim line.  
  
“Ready.”

“Totally sure?”  
  
“Totally sure.”  
  
“You know that once you do this you can never go back.”  
  
“I know. I want this. I’m sure and I’m ready.”

With that, he strikes a match and tosses it onto the kindling of the fire, watching the dry grass and kindling catch light until she grabs him by the back of his jumper and drags him back to the rock wall where they both sit, watching the fire. She isn’t sure of what to expect when his skin finally ignites and from the look on his face, neither does he so she takes a firm hold of his hand and keeps her eyes ahead. When the flames do reach the skin, nothing remarkable happens save for his intake of breath. He doesn’t cry, he doesn’t scream, he doesn’t start bleeding or writhing in pain.

All in all, it’s very anti-climatic.

They sit together, his hand in hers until they have to leave because someone is going to notice the thick black smoke rising high above the trees. This time, they leave together though, still holding hands and her hood is down.

“What happens now?” He asks and she stops and looks back to the fire, up to the sky where the stars are still out even as the sun begins to rise and then back to the path ahead of them.  
  
“That’s not for me to decide,” she says finally. “You’ll have to figure that out.”  
  
“You’ll be there though? Won’t you?” He takes her other hand and she goes with it, allows him to turn her so they’re facing one another. There’s still fear in his eyes and neediness but she thinks she can see a hint of purpose lurking behind them.  
  
“I’ll be there.”

He grins and starts moving forward without casting a look over his shoulder. Before long they’re both running side by side, tripping over rocks and branches but somehow they manage not to fall and sprain ankles and wrists and she realises that he’s laughing and she laughs too.

Neither of them have any clue where they’re going and they’re both going to catch hell for it but right now? Right now she’s not going to worry. She’s going to run, this beautiful boy who doesn’t look so lost and lonely anymore by her side, her red hood down so the wind is in her face, laughing all the way to wherever the hell they’re going.


End file.
